Funds are requested to help support the Fourth International Conference on Bioinorganic Chemistry (ICBIC-4), to be held July 23-27, 1989, on the campus of Massachussets Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), Cambridge, MA. This Conference follows the previous three of these biennial conferences, all held in Europe, i.e. Florence, Italy (1983), the Algarve, Portugal (1985), and Leiden, The Netherlands (1987). This conference developed in order to cultivate meaningful international communications and exchanges of ideas in a rapidly growing field requiring highly interdisciplinary approaches. While there exists a number of other very important conferences dealing with the role of metals in biological systems, they are either quite small and/or specialized. ICBIC exists to provide a largely international forum for scientific exchange on a large variety of subjects, also allowing for the participation of graduate students and postdoctorals. The first three European conferences were highly successful, each attracting 400-500 scientists. The 1989 meeting is the first ICBIC to be held in the United States, and this is expected to result in a near doubling of attendees. It is very important to develop a successful meeting, highlighting important areas with bioinorganic chemistry. Here in the USA, we expect that the opportunity to attend ICBIC will attract many scientists who have not participated in bioinorganic meetings before, but who find that they are from sub-disciplines having considerable overlap with the field. At ICBIC-4, there will be lectures from five distinguished plenary speakers. There will also be over 90 other invited speakers divided into 13 minisymposia, divided along functional lines where possible. They are: (1) Metal Ions as Biological Triggers; (2) Hydrolytic & Group Transfer (3) Bio-organometallic; (4) Biological O2-Utilization & Processing; (5) Nitrogen & Sulfur Biological Cycles; (6) Redox Biochemistry/Electron Transfer; (7) Biomineralization; (8) Metals, Microbes & Gene Expression; (9) Spectroscopic/Physical Methods in Bioinorganic Chemistry; (10) Storage & Transport of Metals; (11) Metals in Medicine; (12) Secondary Interactions (Molecular Recognition) in Bioinorganic Chemistry and (13) Environmental & Trace Element Bioinorganic Chemistry. Large poster paper sessions are planned within a schedule allowing for considerable interaction time amongst attendees.